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Mugshots.com Writing Staff. Sycamore, IL – Jack McCullough, 76, has been exonerated for the murder of a 7-year old girl in one of the most bizarre cold case / exoneration ever. In December 1957, little Maria Ridulph was abducted near her home in Sycamore, Illinois. Her body was discovered five months later. McCullough was 19-years old at the time and was initially considered a suspect. But he was cleared by investigators because he had an ironclad alibi—he was 40-miles away at the time of the abduction attempting to enlist with the U.S. Air Force.

The case went cold for over 30 years until McCullough’s half-sister claimed that their mother incriminated McCullough on her deathbed in 1994. Prosecutors reopened the case on that basis and zeroed in on McCullough. The victim’s friend who was with her just prior to her abduction and saw the perpetrator pick McCullough’s picture out from a photo array. But here’s where manipulative investigative work can easily lead to investigators’ desired result. All the men in the photo array were wearing suitcoats and were professional photos, except McCullough’s. Of course, his picture stood out and clearly suggested to the witness “this is the guy to pick.”

Based on that shockingly flimsy evidence, McCullough was convicted of Maria’s murder in 2012 and sentenced to life in prison. Fortunately, during a review by DeKalb County State’s Attorney Richard Schmack of hundreds of pages of police reports and other documents that were improperly excluded at trial, new evidence was discovered pointing to McCullough’s innocence. Schmack wrote in his findings that the barred documents contained “a wealth of information pointing to McCullough’s innocence, and absolutely nothing showing guilt.”

Specifically, newly discovered phone records prove that McCullough couldn’t possibly have abducted the victim. He had always maintained that he was 40-miles away when the little girl was abducted, and phone records prove it. Schmack discovered a phone record of McCullough making a collect call to his parents from a phone booth 40-miles away from where Maria was abducted at 6:57 pm. She was abducted between 6:45 and 6:55. Clearly, there’s absolutely no way he could have been the person who took Maria. Schmack echoed that sentiment, saying that prosecutors were fully convinced of McCullough’s innocence.

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mugshots.com definitions:

Arrest or booked: An arrest is the act of depriving a person of his or her liberty usually in relation to the purported investigation or prevention of crime and presenting (the arrestee) to a procedure as part of the criminal justice system. The term is Anglo-Norman in origin and is related to the French word arrêt, meaning "stop".

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The word "arrest" on Mugshots.com means the apprehension of a person or the deprivation of a person's liberty.

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